July 30th marks roughly 100 days until the 2018-19 season tipoff for the 100th season of WKU Hilltopper Basketball, and over the next 100 days, WKU Athletics will treat fans to unique moments and interesting history from Hilltopper Basketball, all leading up to the start of the season in November.
| DAY 100 (July 30) |
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| We begin our countdown with two Hilltopper legends we lost in the last year, Wes Strader (left) and Jim McDaniels, visiting at a team banquet in 1967. McDaniels, who passed away in September 2017, finished his WKU career with 2,238 points, which ties for the all-time program record. He also holds the record for several other categories, was an All-American in each of his years of varsity competition and led the program to the 1971 Final Four. Strader, who passed away in January 2018, was the "Voice of the Hilltoppers" and called play-by-play for WKU men's basketball and football games from 1964-2000. His career spanned 621 WKU Basketball wins, 13 NCAA Tournaments, four Sweet 16 appearances and the 1971 Final Four trip. Both McDaniels and Strader have banners hanging in their honor in the Diddle Arena rafters. |
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| DAY 99 (July 31) |
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| J.L. Arthur, pictured in the center of the back row in the suit and tie, was the first coach of WKU Hilltopper Basketball from 1914-16. His first Hilltopper squad went 5-1 in 1914-15, while records don't have a full history of the 1915-16 season and only show that the team went 2-1 over its first three games. After Arthur's two years at the helm, WKU didn't field a team from 1916-21 because of World War I before resuming play for the 1921-22 season. |
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| DAY 98 (August 1) |
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| WKU athletic trainer Bill "Doc E" Edwards (left) tapes the ankle of Hilltopper guard Mike Reese during the 1980-81 season. Reese averaged 11.3 points and started 27 games for the Hilltoppers that season under head coach Clem Haskins. Edwards went on to earn the position of associate athletic director for athletic training and sports medicine at WKU until his retirement in 2017. He was a 2016 inductee into WKU's Hall of Distinguished Alumni. |
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| DAY 97 (August 2) |
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| WKU Hilltopper Basketball's first official home was the "Old Red Barn." Built in 1920 as a temporary wooden gymnasium under the direction of President Dr. Henry Hardin Cherry to house physical education classes and athletic events, the Old Red Barn sat toward the back of Recitation Hall, which resided on the site of the current Cherry Hall. In the earliest years of the program before the Old Red Barn's construction, the basketball team often played in the YMCA building downtown. At one later point, the Old Red Barn also housed 40 female students during a room shortage and was then known as the "No Man's Inn." In January 1926, the newly constructed College High Gym became the new home of WKU indoor sports. The Old Red Barn was demolished in the summer of 1931 as WKU prepared to compete athletically in the new Health and Physical Education building, which is now Helm Library. |
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| DAY 96 (August 3) |
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| Then-WKU head coach Darrin Horn consoles Hilltopper guard Tyrone Brazelton as the two walk with WKU guards Ty Rogers and Courtney Lee to a postgame press conference following WKU's 88-78 loss to top-seeded UCLA in the 2008 Sweet 16, the program's deepest run since. After defeating Drake and San Diego in their first two games of the tournament – including Rogers' iconic shot at the buzzer to top Drake – the Hilltoppers went toe-to-toe with a UCLA squad packed with future NBA talent, including Kevin Love, Russell Westbrook, Darren Collison and Luc Mbah a Moute. |
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| DAY 95 (August 4) |
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| Hilltopper players Clem Haskins (from left), Wayne Chapman, Dwight Smith, Butch Kaufman and Greg Smith walk across campus between classes in April 1967. All five players averaged in double figures scoring, led by Haskins' 22.6 points per game, on the 1966-67 squad that finished 23-3, won the Ohio Valley Conference championship and fell in overtime to Dayton in the NCAA Tournament. The Hilltoppers were ranked eighth in the country in the preseason Associated Press poll and sixth in the final poll. The Smith brothers and Haskins also each averaged at least 10.9 rebounds per game. |
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| DAY 94 (August 5) |
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| Before his name graced WKU's football stadium, L.T. Smith (right) served as basketball coach for WKU during the 1921-22 season. He was also the school's football coach in 1920 and 1921. Smith gave up his coaching duties in 1922 to devote most of his time to the university's industrial arts program, but he remained heavily involved in athletics over his time on campus. He was the chairman of WKU's Faculty Athletic Committee for many years and was instrumental in the 1922 hiring of the coach who would replace him on the basketball court and lead the program to new heights and national recognition – E.A. Diddle. |
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| DAY 93 (August 6) |
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| Hilltopper players Don Thomas (left), Kevin Dildy (center) and Kenny Ellis touch the Liberty Bell during a trip to Philadelphia to play against La Salle on Jan. 10, 1979. WKU lost that matchup 90-66, but it was just one of several battles with La Salle over the years. The two programs have played 30 times in their history, with WKU holding a 16-14 edge. They played 20 times between 1960 and 1979, while both programs were often nationally ranked and enjoying a golden age of hoops. This photo was taken by longtime WKU sports information director Paul Just, for whom the media center inside E.A. Diddle Arena is now named. |
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| DAY 92 (August 7) |
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| The departure of L.T. Smith as Western's basketball coach paved the way for the legendary career of E.A. Diddle, seen here on the left with his third team in 1925. Diddle was the head coach at Greenville High School in Kentucky in 1922 when his team went 26-2 and participated in the regional tournament in Bowling Green after a flood prevented the team from traveling to its scheduled site of Owensboro. Diddle impressed everyone in Bowling Green with his coaching abilities so much that WKU officials extended an offer for him to become athletic director and head coach of all sports. Over the next decade, Diddle won state championships coaching women's basketball, football and baseball, but it was his 42-year career as men's basketball head coach that cemented his legacy and placed his name on the Hilltoppers' current arena. Diddle won 759 games over his men's basketball coaching career, dominated with championship after championship and became the first coach to guide a team through 1,000 games at one school. |
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| DAY 91 (August 8) |
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| The 1948 WKU Hilltopper Basketball team visits Latin Quarter in New York City during a trip to the NIT. Under the direction of head coach E.A. Diddle, the 1947-48 squad finished 28-2 and took home a third-place finish in the NIT at Madison Square Garden. Exactly 70 years later, the most recent 2017-18 Hilltoppers returned to New York for the NIT, reaching the semifinals before falling to Utah at Madison Square Garden. |
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